Grist Mill Road (24 page)

Cottonwood and black birch, glaciers and striations, if they'd told me any of this stuff at school I couldn't have cared less.

So how do you feel now? you said.

Out of breath, I said, but also … I paused, trying to map out my feelings. I wasn't sure I could put it into words, I just started to smile.

Feels good, doesn't it? you said. Kind of like all the lights just got turned on in your brain.

It feels amazing, I said. It feels nearly as good as …

Whoa! you said. You say anything lewd, young man, and I'm knocking you straight back down to the bottom of the cliff.

I looked over my shoulder, not quite believing how far I'd climbed, and then said, in my best wiseass voice, I think you'll find that technically it's called an escarpment.

Your beard cracked wide open.

I can't think of a time in my life when I ever felt better than that.

 

ROSEBORN, NEW YORK, 2008

McCluskey is sweating even before he reaches the front door.

Stepping onto the porch, he mops the back of his neck with a handkerchief, and he sees the doorbell but reaches for the knocker anyway, swinging it hard three times before taking two steps back, angling his body, gun-bearing side nearest the house.

The temperature is rising by the second, Hannah's dress already starting to cling to her body, the mounting heat reminding her of another day in August, twenty-six years ago, and when the door opens up, it swings wide, as if thrown open by her father to welcome family or guests,
between a rock and Earhart Place
.

And there he is, Matthew.

The air rushes into her chest, Matthew Weaver, Matthew dressed as if he is about to head off to church, a fresh white shirt tucked into blue pants, his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows,
just like Patch,
she thinks briefly, and then Matthew glances at her, nothing more than half a look, but he knows who she is, no hint of surprise, almost as if he's been waiting for her.

McCluskey gives him a few moments to take in the scene, and then a few more, let the suspect be the one to start talking, judge the guy by his first move, but Matthew says nothing, and everyone just stands there, as if waiting for the heat of the sunshine to
kindle the conversation, Hannah feeling as if she might burst into flames on the spot.

Eventually McCluskey lets out a brief snort, an amused admission of defeat, and begins. Matthew Weaver?

Used to be, says Matthew.

Oh yeah? says McCluskey. And I used to be a tight end. So what?

It's Denby now.

McCluskey sniffs disinterestedly. OK then Matthew Who-Gives-a-Fuck, my name's Detective McCluskey, he says, taking his badge from an inside pocket, holding it steady and a little too close to Matthew's face, Matthew not altering the track of his gaze, still staring straight at McCluskey.

You can put away the badge, Detective, says Matthew. I know what police look like.

Yeah, I heard you spent some quality time with a few colleagues.

That was many, many years ago, says Matthew.

We don't change all that much, says McCluskey. Anyway, I'm just saying who I am so you know who you're dealing with. This visit isn't exactly official.

Matthew folds his arms, and leans on the doorframe. So you're telling me I could close the door right now and you'd have to go away?

Whistling a merry fuckin tune, says McCluskey.

I don't mind talking to you, says Matthew.

That's great, says McCluskey, I never did learn how to whistle.

Matthew leans forward and laughs. What is this, Detective? The preamble? The softening-up period?

Nah, says McCluskey, this is the bit where I'm assessing your character using my many years of experience dealing with dangerous criminals.

And?

It ain't good news.

Because?

Because unfortunately I don't think I can scare you, says McCluskey. You don't seem like the nervous type.

And why would that be bad news?

Usually you just frighten someone and you don't have to shoot them.

Shooting me would be an issue, Detective?

Yeah, unfortunately. Unless you'd be good enough to come at me with a weapon—see, I only ever shot this one guy and he'd just killed his wife and baby boy and then came charging at me, head down, with a bloody machete.

I guess kills don't come much cleaner, Detective.

Right. Luck of the Irish.

So you never had cause to shoot anyone innocent?

Not so far. Bad for the pension. In most cases.

Then I'll take my chances with you, Detective McCluskey.

McCluskey tucks his fingers into the front pockets of his pants and starts tapping a foot. You understand why I'm here, of course, right?

Matthew purses his lips, bobs his head. I'd say I could probably guess.

Yeah, well this ain't
Family Feud
, so I'm thinking I should spell it out, just in case.

I can do it for you, Detective.
H-A-N-N-A-H
.

Fuckin A, Matthew Weaver. Now just add the words
stay away from
and we're good to go.

Matthew unfolds his arms and puts one of his hands in a pocket. And yet there she is, he says. On my lawn.

McCluskey blows out hard, running a hand over his mouth, as if fighting to keep something down. Your lawn? he says. That's what you said, no?
Your
?
Lawn
?

That's right, Detective. Legally speaking, it's my lawn.

Right, and I'm legally speaking's biggest fan, fuckin trust me. However, you can see how it comes across, your choice of property, right? You know, bearing in mind your criminal record.

Matthew raises a hand, holds it over his heart. Detective McCluskey, he says, you have my word that I will stay away from Hannah Jensen.

McCluskey claps his palm to the back of his neck as if swatting
an insect, can already feel the sting of the heat. And I should believe you exactly why? he says.

Because otherwise you'll shoot me, says Matthew. I thought we'd already reached an understanding on that front.

We did? says McCluskey. Well, that's just great. You see, sometimes I say things and people don't listen, and I got this foul fuckin temper.

I don't want to upset you, Detective.

Considerate guy. Who knew this would be so easy?

Matthew lowers his chin, drops his gaze to the ground, and then, looking quickly back up again, says, But if Hannah ever wants to come to see me, of course … He lets the sentence trail away, punctuating its end with a shrug.

McCluskey can feel the heat stirring inside of him now as the sunlight pierces his suit, penetrates his skin, McCluskey feeling like there's something swarming inside, his voice rising quickly to threat level, Now you listen to me, fuck-hole, I know exactly what's happening here …

I doubt that very much, Detective.

 … no more fuckin games, he warns. I've dealt with your type—psychopaths, bullies, whack jobs, lowlifes—every type of fuckin type, you understand? And I win, Matthew Weaver. I always win. And you know why?

But Matthew doesn't answer, doesn't even seem to be listening, just starts to move his head, turning it to look at her, McCluskey slapping the doorframe …
Eyes back on me, get your eyes the fuck back on me
 … turning his head to meet her eye for a second, two seconds …
Or so help me, I'll fuckin drop you right now
 … and having held her gaze, having taken her in, he opens his mouth, and he says to her, Hannah, I'm sorry.

The words seem to shatter something unseen in the air.

McCluskey stops, everything stops, there is only the chirring of insects.

And then, when Hannah opens her mouth, the words come out loud. Shoot him, she cries, why don't you shoot him? And then she is running, her anger aflame and unquenchable, running
for McCluskey, not knowing why, not even wondering why, and when she gets within reach, McCluskey catches her, wrapping her up in his arms, Hannah struggling against the mass of his flesh, but she can fight for only a moment, and soon she surrenders, nothing left, only McCluskey saying her name over and over, hoisting her into his arms and carrying her off, nothing left.

 

MATTHEW

Hannah's thirteenth birthday was on a Thursday, four days after I'd met you down by Lake Swangum. How is it I remember the exact day so well? It's because that was the day Hannah kissed me. I imagine you thought the giving and receiving of birthday kisses was supposed to take place the other way around. Me too.

I'd almost befriended Hannah a few months earlier, and I can't remember exactly what happened, but it hadn't worked out. I don't recall feeling spurned, it was just one of those things, but perhaps in trying to make friends with her, I'd planted some kind of seed. Certainly Hannah wanting to kiss me came as a complete surprise at the time.

The first thing that happened was that Jen, Hannah's friend, got Tricky out of the way. It was nearly the end of the school day and Tricky was dumping books in his locker when Jen approached us, Hannah half a step behind, and said she wanted to talk to Patch. After that, Jen led him away by the hand—
by the hand!
I can still picture the way Tricky trudged away down the hallway, all stiff-armed and stiff-legged, his ears lit up like taillights.

Hi, Matthew, said Hannah.

Hannah, what's up?

It's my birthday today.

Happy birthday. I didn't get you anything.

That's OK, don't worry about it.

Why would I worry about it?

At this point, Hannah glanced off into the distance, where I'm fairly certain she saw one of Christie's cohorts, Tammy whatever-her-name-was. Hey, come with me, she said, walking off down the hallway.

I hesitated a moment—not because I wasn't intrigued, but because I didn't like being told what to do. Finally intrigue won the battle and I went after her, Hannah twenty steps ahead and flashing me coy over-the-shoulder looks. She stopped at the front doors to school, checked to see if there were any teachers around, and slipped outside.

When I followed her out, Hannah was on the top step, right next to the doors. Her back was against the wall and she was inviting me closer with a come-hither finger. For once I did exactly as I was told and Hannah reached up to pull me down, a look of shock on her face as if she couldn't believe what she was doing, and we kissed.

It was interesting. Kissing Hannah wasn't at all like kissing Christie—drier, but not too dry, and with less of the mouth-circling and tongue-thrusting that formed the basis of Christie's washing-machine-like technique. I liked the innocence of Hannah's kiss, I liked the way it was slow and yet keen, nervous and gentle. I opened my eyes for a moment as our lips remained pressed, Hannah's face a picture of beauty—but at the same time there was a complete innocence to her allure, Hannah having no idea of her feminine power. The look on her face was one of wanting only to please, and also a kind of focus, as if Hannah were desperate not to make a mistake, as if this kiss were nothing but giving. I closed my eyes again and enjoyed every second.

When we emerged from the fog of that kiss, Tammy whatever-her-name-was was standing close by, openmouthed, her shock exposing a pink wad of bubble gum wedged between her gums and her teeth. Oh my God, she said, when I tell her about this, Christie's gonna shit!

I frowned at her. That would be an odd reaction, I said.

You total, total dick, Matthew, said Tammy, scurrying back through the doors.

I turned to Hannah, who looked amused, although I didn't realize I'd said anything funny.
An odd reaction?
she said, bursting out laughing.

I liked the way she looked, laughing like that, and I wanted to kiss her again. Hurting Hannah was the thing furthest from my mind in that moment, but still, that's exactly what happened, because when Hannah stopped laughing, she said to me, So, Matthew, does this mean you're my boyfriend now? And instead of simply saying yes, a response that would have led to the most preferable outcome, unfortunately I hesitated. In fact, more than that, I'm fairly certain my body made some kind of recoiling-in-disgust motion.

I felt bad right away, I wasn't actually hesitating at the idea of spending more time with Hannah, romantically, and I wish I could have explained that to her at the time. Only the trouble was, I didn't understand it myself, that what was in fact causing me to recoil was something bound up in the abstract concept of language, because now that I'm older, I can see very clearly what the problem was—the word
boyfriend
.

Boyfriend,
what an unappealing and sickeningly childish label, no? Labels in general have always made me feel queasy—it's just like I remember you saying to me one time, Pete, labels are for soup cans—but when it comes to the language of dating (
date
is another word that jabs at my gag reflex) the naming of things starts to become especially sickening.
Boyfriend, girlfriend, going steady, going out with, sweethearts, wooing, courtship
 … Did someone come up with these belittling terms while they were in kindergarten? Shouldn't they be written in crayon?

However, the extreme discomfort I feel when it comes to the infantilizing language of …
dating
 
…
has nothing to do with a fear of commitment. Think about the words we use for the committed.
Husband
and
wife
. And we talk about
marriage, wedlock, ceremony, union.
These might be labels, but at least they're strong words, the sort of language appropriate for adults. None of these
terms make me want to throw up in the nearest trash can. (Although I will admit the word
nuptials
does strange things to my stomach.) Perhaps in that moment if Hannah had asked me to marry her, although I might not have said yes, at least I would have given the question some serious thought.

Only I couldn't have explained any of this to Hannah at the time. I just knew there was something about the word
boyfriend
that made me flinch. So when she said it, I hesitated, and then recoiled—it's also not completely impossible that I looked repulsed.

Hannah marched straight past me, looking ashamed, hurt, and confused.

Hey, Hannah, come back, I called out.

She threw open the doors and ran back into school.

*   *   *

I FELT BAD ABOUT THAT,
I truly did. I kept thinking about the look on Hannah's face and being the cause of her pain made me feel uncomfortable, so the next day at school I decided to swallow my distaste for the word. I would walk up to Hannah the moment she got off the school bus, take a deep, fortifying breath, and offer to be her
boyfriend
.

Which was a perfectly good plan, except for the fact that when Hannah's school bus disgorged its morning contents, I saw Jen skipping down its steps but no Hannah.

Hey, Jen, where's Hannah?

You're disgusting, Matthew Weaver.

What?

You're a filthy old snake, said Jen.

Jen, I have no idea what you're talking about.

She's sick at home. She has mono.

So?

The kissing disease!

What's that got to do with me?

You kissed her.

I didn't kiss Hannah, she kissed me. And anyway, I haven't got mono.

You're a rat, a weasel. A pig!

OK, Jen. Any other animals you'd like to add to the list?

Creep!

I shrugged and headed off to find Tricky.

*   *   *

MEANWHILE, CHRISTIE'S RESPONSE TO THE
news of my cheating lips had been, first of all, to instantly banish me from her affections—
so dumped
was the actual phrase, the message coming via a couple of her best shrews—and, secondly, to spread word around school that I was a fag.

However, there was nothing in any way insightful about Christie's choice of rumor, this was just one of the fashionable insults back then,
fag, dick, pussy, wimp, wuss, suck shit, bite me
 … I never even understood what the last of those means. Not that anyone dared call me a fag to my face, but for a few weeks at school I could sense the word on everyone's lips. It really didn't trouble me at all.

Soon it became increasingly clear that mono had hit Hannah pretty hard because she was away from school for four whole weeks, and while I wouldn't say that Hannah and that kiss vanished completely from my thoughts during that time, my feelings about her certainly started to fade, because the better I got to know you, Pete, seeing you up there in the Swangums, surrounded by the evidence of things that had happened tens of thousands of years ago, the older and more out of place I felt around people who were supposedly of a similar age to me.

It started to feel as if the other children at school, already young-seeming anyway, were getting older only in single-year increments, while I was aging in geological aeons, and although I remained friends with Tricky, he seemed even less ready to bloom into the world than Hannah. However, on Saturdays he and I would still head up to the Swangums on our bikes together. For a while I tried to teach him about rocks and glaciers, only Tricky, it quickly became clear, wasn't at all interested in the deeper meaning of rocks, no matter how hard I tried to educate him. He still
wanted to play all the childish games we'd invented, Tarzan, Houdini, and Deer Patrol.

It was my Sundays that now meant everything to me, those Sundays when you and I would meet up at the beach, you already occupying your spot when I arrived, perched up on that glacial erratic, which we'd taken to calling Harley—
Harley at noon? Sure, Harley's good. See you at Harley.
Every time we met you'd ask me, with an amused grin, How was school this week? To which I'd answer, I got named Scholar of the Week, or, I aced the history test, or something like that, and then you'd jump off the rock, chuckling, and offer me some trail mix, and the first few times I rooted around your paper bag, eyed my pickings suspiciously and then, without eating so much as a peanut, heaved the whole fistful out into the lake. Eventually you stopped offering and just gave me an amused grin every time as you fished around in the bag for a small fistful of food, and after that we'd hike and scramble and you'd teach me about everything we saw, mountain spleenwort, hemlock trees, yellowthroats, bunchberry, the name of the nubbly rock up there, Swangum conglomerate, quartz and more quartz, tougher than granite.

I remember you pointing to a deep gouge off the trail, a quarry, you told me, explaining that Swangum conglomerate, tougher than granite, was perfect for making millstones back in the day. All of the millstones for hundreds of miles around had been carved from those rocks, but now they were only good for yard ornaments or marking the entrance of the park in town, those two stones having been taken from a mill that once sat at the end of Grist Mill Road. This is before the cement industry came along, you told me.

A few days ago, driving over to New Paltz, I saw one of those millstones being used as a yard ornament, just like you'd said twenty-six years ago. I stopped the car, knocked on the door, and offered the man who lived there five hundred dollars on the spot. I know it was foolish to think that the sight of a millstone might cure you, or at least provide a jolt that would start to bring
everything back, but right now I'd try anything to have you the way you once were.

I remember the day we scrambled down Devil's Ladder by Jakobskill Falls to the place where the water thundered down into the plunge pool, and you told me how you could make rainbows dance over the wet rocks by moving your head around. Nature's disco club, you said, and I laughed at you. Disco club? When's the last time you went for a night out, Pete, 1975? And you said, What? That's only seven years ago. And I said, Right, that's exactly what an old man would say.

You flashed your teeth at me. You always liked it when I teased you.

For those first few months we spent together, I suppose I thought of you as something like a teacher—although I respected you, so perhaps
guide
or
mentor
might be the better word. I certainly had a sense that, whenever you taught me something, whenever we hiked through the mountains, or especially when we scrambled the rocks, you were helping me to find my own path in life, enabling me to blaze a trail that school would never reveal to me, something I could never have learned from my parents. This was my awakening into the world, my becoming an adult, or maybe just becoming myself. After that first rock scramble you'd noticed the look of wonder on my face, how it was like lights turning on in my brain, and that's how it was every week, every Sunday, new flashes and clusters, little galaxies of existence bursting to life.

What was becoming clear to me was that I didn't have to be like everybody else, and that was the best lesson you taught me, I was just fine as myself.

*   *   *

WE WERE SITTING ON A
boulder downstream of the falls, you munching your trail mix, me breathing the good air, when I realized how you always asked questions about me, but I didn't know much about you. So I said to you, Pete, are you married?

Not up to this point, you said.

What do you do when you're not here? I said. Watch TV? Go to the movies?

Mostly read, you said. I like learning on my own, I like books. Magazines as well,
National Geographic, Time
. Read the Bible every day.

The Bible?

Sure, that surprises you? You're not from a religious family?

Mom takes us to church sometimes. But not much.

And how do you like church?

About zero percent.

Well, church can be a whole lot like school. There's nothing wrong with learning, it's just that most of the teachers fail their subjects. But that's just my two cents.

You don't go to church?

No, sir.

That felt funny, you calling me sir. Funny but I liked it.

You thought things over for a while, staring off into the falls, and eventually you said to me, Pews are just more of life's boxes, Matthew, and then there's an aisle, so you have two sets of boxes divided by a straight line. My parents were Quakers, but even the most informal meetings never sat well with me. So now I wouldn't know which church to go to—Catholic, Episcopalian, Methodist, Lutheran … What's the point? Labels are for soup cans, Matthew. But I do read the Bible and I believe in God, even though I'm not sure the God I believe in is the one I'm reading about. But it's a wise book, for sure. I like to think the Bible gets most things right—I let it guide me, although I wouldn't say I let it rule me. So I read, I think about what I've read, I come up here, and here's where I hear God's word, beneath the tall sky. I never heard a single utterance of God anyplace with a roof. But maybe that's just me and it doesn't matter what I think. What do you think, Matthew?